A review by dorothy_gale
The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky
1.0
1 STAR: "CHAPTER 3, AN ONION" SHOULD SAY IT ALL! If you didn't like War & Peace, you probably won't like this either. 796 pages of excessive detail nearly bored me to tears. I wanted to quit several times. It was, however, a gift. I aim to never suffer through a book like this again! I plan to be even more selective, even if it means I won't ever read books that were deemed "Classics" by some mystery group of people.
I thought maybe it was the "Literature" genre, but after checking my history, I found that the 24 Lit books I have read (with an average publication date of 1915), were rated an average of 4.03 by other GR readers, and 3.46 by me. So, I will be much more careful about any material the Goodreads world lumps into that category.
Then I checked my 36 pre-20th Century books, which averaged an 1845 publication date. Fellow readers averaged a 3.96 where I averaged a 3.11. So, I went and deleted several pre-20th Century books from my to-read list because clearly they are not my thing. This included Fyodor Dostoyevsky's Crime & Punishment. No can do. Life is too short!
Poor Fyodor -- I had to read his wiki. I couldn't help but wonder whether he had an editor (and in general, when the role of editor really came about). As I suspected, he is "one of the most widely read and highly regarded Russian writers." I didn't want to make it a Russian thing because I probably hadn't read enough Russian authors to have good data. War & Peace by Tolsoy (1392 pages from 1869), I gave 1 star. Anna Karenina by Tolstoy (964 pages from 1877), I gave 4 stars. The Overcoat by Gogol (57 pages from 1842) happens to be the ONE book that I didn't rate. I do have two more Russian works on my to-read list: Lolita by Nabokov (331 pages from 1955) and The Master and Margarita by Bulgakov (372 pages from 1967). Maybe I will do better with shorter 20th Century Russian Literature. Anyway, his wiki did mention an editor in 1866, which was 13 years before he published The Brothers Karamazov. So maybe it is as Goodreads' definition of "Classics" says: "The work is usually considered to be a representation of the period in which it was written." So nothing personal to Fyodor, or the Russian culture (much respect)... it's that I am prejudiced in favor of the 20th and 21st centuries, and I have a short attention span.
As for editors, a quick search found that their role goes back at least to 1802. I have a new appreciation for them. Especially the ones whose professional creed is "less is more." If you exceed 700 pages, you better be Margaret Mitchell or Dan Brown!
I thought maybe it was the "Literature" genre, but after checking my history, I found that the 24 Lit books I have read (with an average publication date of 1915), were rated an average of 4.03 by other GR readers, and 3.46 by me. So, I will be much more careful about any material the Goodreads world lumps into that category.
Then I checked my 36 pre-20th Century books, which averaged an 1845 publication date. Fellow readers averaged a 3.96 where I averaged a 3.11. So, I went and deleted several pre-20th Century books from my to-read list because clearly they are not my thing. This included Fyodor Dostoyevsky's Crime & Punishment. No can do. Life is too short!
Poor Fyodor -- I had to read his wiki. I couldn't help but wonder whether he had an editor (and in general, when the role of editor really came about). As I suspected, he is "one of the most widely read and highly regarded Russian writers." I didn't want to make it a Russian thing because I probably hadn't read enough Russian authors to have good data. War & Peace by Tolsoy (1392 pages from 1869), I gave 1 star. Anna Karenina by Tolstoy (964 pages from 1877), I gave 4 stars. The Overcoat by Gogol (57 pages from 1842) happens to be the ONE book that I didn't rate. I do have two more Russian works on my to-read list: Lolita by Nabokov (331 pages from 1955) and The Master and Margarita by Bulgakov (372 pages from 1967). Maybe I will do better with shorter 20th Century Russian Literature. Anyway, his wiki did mention an editor in 1866, which was 13 years before he published The Brothers Karamazov. So maybe it is as Goodreads' definition of "Classics" says: "The work is usually considered to be a representation of the period in which it was written." So nothing personal to Fyodor, or the Russian culture (much respect)... it's that I am prejudiced in favor of the 20th and 21st centuries, and I have a short attention span.
As for editors, a quick search found that their role goes back at least to 1802. I have a new appreciation for them. Especially the ones whose professional creed is "less is more." If you exceed 700 pages, you better be Margaret Mitchell or Dan Brown!